When its sickness has advanced too far, a tree’s chances of survival are slim. Its roots rot, its trunk swells, its metabolic processes are interrupted, and its leaves, starved of sap, fall to the ground. When a person falls ill, viruses or bacteria are the usual suspects, and justifiably so, but no one asks where they came from, how did they happen to creep inside there, why today and not a month ago, and why this person and not that other, who may well have been much more exposed to the risk of a contagion? When two patients receive the same treatment, why does one recover and the other succumb? A lightning bolt grazing the bark of an ancient oak can suffice to initiate the process that leads to its destruction:bacteria, funguses, and beetles enter the breach and propagate rapidly, and soon the tree is in peril of its life. Fruit trees become fragile when they lose their verticality. Even if the wind bends a pine, it can keep growing, but a bent apricot tree cannot; its exact perpendicularity to the ground is what allows the tree to live and bear fruit.
